Friday, February 24, 2017

Liam brought in a wonderful book, by Jeanette Winter, that tells the stories of Iqbal Masih and Malala Yousafzai. After reading this book, we are reminded of how lucky we are and of the many injustices of the world.

Students took time to ponder and discuss the effects of child slavery and girls being denied an education. Ask your children about what they learned!

Did you know that your brain grows as you learn? For example, the more you read, the better reader you become and the stronger your brain becomes! There is no limit to what we can learn!

Our students have the opportunity to participate in a very meaningful brain study being conducted at UVM and across the United States. Students will participate for 10 years, play games, win prizes and even get a picture of their brains!

Students have papers coming home again today with more information! Thanks Hugh for an engaging presentation!

Thursday, February 23, 2017

Chef James noticed how passionate my students are about TerraCycle! He also noticed how hard they have to work to teach other students about what is TerraCycle versus trash, recycling or compost. He came up with an awesome idea that will make TerraCycling during lunch better, and may even transform TerraCycling across the school!

At the Schoolwide assembly today, Chef James and two of our students shared the new system with everyone. They also showed off the gorgeous and helpful TerraCycle boxes my students made!

Don't forget to TerraCycle over vacation! If you forget what you can TerraCycle, go to the TerraCycle link at the top of our class blog!

Monday, February 20, 2017

Our new Farm to School coordinator, Jake Magnan, heard about the amazing filmmakers and vloggers in our classroom! He asked if one of my students could vlog about his upcoming taste test. We couldn't wait to help him out! Here is Ben's awesome vlog that showcases the delicious taste test that Jake put on for our students! We can't wait to find out what he cooks up next!

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Today is a very exciting day because today we publish our first student vlog! Last year, Mr. Berry and I teamed up to help students find their voice through vlogging; it was a magical experience that I wanted to continue to give to my students. This year my students are more independent with the project, and the outcome is amazing!
Please enjoy the first vlog from my L4 Vloggers!

During our data unit in math, students got to find their homes using Google Maps. They learned how many miles they were from our school and many other cool facts. One student was able to find her school and home in Thailand! Do you see the red car? That's her car! We can't wait to see more of Thailand with our friend!

Fourth graders at RES are wrapping up a unit on media literacy. They learned about several strategies that advertisers use to get people's attention and convince them to buy products. Then they practiced finding those strategies in different kinds of advertisements. Finally, the scholars created video advertisements for books, also known as book trailers, to try to convince other scholars to read their favorite stories.

We hope you enjoy the book trailers! Can you identify some of the strategies used by our scholars? They may include Association, Bandwagon, Beautiful People, Bribery, Celebrity Endorsements, Experts, Explicit Claims, Fear, Humor, Intensity, Maybe/Weasel Words, Plain Folks, Testimonials, Repetition, and Warm and Fuzzy.

We share all our scholars' book trailers on YouTube and Twitter. Sometimes we hear back from authors that they liked the trailers! We have added those mentions below the videos.

Laurie Keller, the author of Arnie the Doughnut, liked this book trailer on Twitter!